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Watch The Sky
It's one thing to try to get away with what you believe to be a lie and be caught at it-- and something different, and far worse sometimes, to find it isn't a lie ...
by James H. Schmitz
Illustrated by Hortens
Uncle William Boles' war-battered old Geest gun gave the impression thatat some stage of its construction it had been pulled out of shape andthen hardened in that form. What remained of it was all of one piece.The scarred and pitted twin barrels were stubby and thick, and thevacant oblong in the frame behind them might have contained standardenergy magazines. It was the stock which gave the alien weapon itscurious appearance. Almost eighteen inches long, it curved abruptly tothe right and was too thin, knobbed and indented to fit comfortably atany point in a human hand. Over half a century had passed since, withthe webbed, boneless fingers of its original owner closed about it, itlast spat deadly radiation at human foemen. Now it hung among UncleWilliam's other collected oddities on the wall above the living roomfireplace.
And today, Phil Boles thought, squinting at the gun with reflectivelynarrowed eyes, some eight years after Uncle William's death, the old warsouvenir would quietly become a key factor in the solution of a colonialplanet's problems. He ran a finger over the dull, roughened frame, bentcloser to study the neatly lettered inscription: GUNDERLAND BATTLETROPHY, ANNO 2172, SGT. WILLIAM G. BOLES. Then, catching a familiarseries of clicking noises from the hall, he straightened quickly andturned away. When Aunt Beulah's go-chair came rolling back into theroom, Phil was sitting at the low tea table, his back to the fireplace.
The go-chair's wide flexible treads carried it smoothly down the threesteps to the sunken section of the living room, Beulah sitting jauntilyerect in it, for all the ninety-six years which had left her the lastsurvivor of the original group of Earth settlers on the world of Roye.She tapped her fingers here and there on the chair's armrests, swingingit deftly about, and brought it to a stop beside the tea table.
"That was Susan Feeney calling," she reported. "And _there_ is somebodyelse for you who thinks I have to be taken care of! Go ahead and finishthe pie, Phil. Can't hurt a husky man like you. Got a couple more bakingfor you to take along."
Phil grinned. "That'd be worth the trip up from Fort Roye all byitself."
Beulah looked pleased. "Not much else I can do for my great-grand nephewnowadays, is there?"
Phil said, after a moment, "Have you given any further thought to--"
"Moving down to Fort Roye?" Beulah pursed her thin lips. "Goodness,Phil, I do hate to disappoint you again, but I'd be completely out ofplace in a town apartment."
"Dr. Fitzsimmons would be pleased," Phil remarked.
"Oh, him! Fitz is another old worry wart. What he wants is to get meinto the hospital. Nothing doing!"
Phil shook his head helplessly, laughed. "After all, working a tuparanch--"
"Nonsense. The ranch is just enough bother to be interesting. Theappliances do everything anyway, and Susan is down here every morningfor a chat and to make sure I'm still all right. She won't admit that,of course, but if she thinks something should be taken care of, thewhole Feeney family shows up an hour later to do it. There's really noreason for you to be sending a dozen men up from Fort Roye every twomonths to harvest the tupa."
Phil shrugged. "No one's ever yet invented an easy way to dig up thoseroots. And the CLU's glad to furnish the men."
"Because you're its president?"
"Uh-huh."
"It really doesn't cost you anything?" Beulah asked doubtfully.
"Not a cent."
* * *
"Hm-m-m. Been meaning to ask you. What made you set up that ... ColonialLabor Union?"
Phil nodded. "That's the official name."
"Why did you set it up in the first place?"
"That's easy to answer," Phil said. "On the day the planetary populationhere touched the forty thousand mark, Roye became legally entitled toits labor union. Why not take advantage of it?"
"What's the advantage?"
"More Earth money coming in, for one thing. Of the twelve hundred CLUmembers we've got in Fort Roye now, seventy-six per cent were unemployedthis month. We'll have a compensation check from the Territorial Officewith the next ship coming in." He smiled at her expression. "Sure, theboys _could_ go back to the tupa ranches. But not everyone likes thatlife as well as you and the Feeneys."
"Earth government lets you get away with it?" Beulah asked curiously."They used to be pretty tight-fisted."
"They still are--but it's the law. The Territorial Office also pays anyCLU president's salary, incidentally. I don't draw too much at themoment, but that will go up automatically with the membership and myresponsibilities."
"What responsibilities?"
"We've set up a skeleton organization," Phil explained. "Now, when Earthgovernment decides eventually to establish a big military base here,they can run in a hundred thousand civilians in a couple of months andeveryone will be fitted into the pattern on Roye without trouble orconfusion. That's really the reason for all the generosity."
Beulah sniffed. "Big base, my eye! There hasn't been six months since Iset foot here that somebody wasn't talking about Fort Roye being turnedinto a Class A military base pretty soon. It'll never happen, Phil.Roye's a farm planet, and that's what it's going to stay."
Phil's lips twitched. "Well, don't give up hope."
"_I'm_ not anxious for any changes," Beulah said. "I like Roye the wayit is."
She peered at a button on the go-chair's armrest which had just begun toput out small bright-blue flashes of light. "Pies are done," sheannounced. "Phil, are you sure you can't stay for dinner?"
Phil looked at his watch, shook his head. "I'd love to, but I reallyhave to get back."
"Then I'll go wrap up the pies for you."
Beulah swung the go-chair around, sent it slithering up the stairs andout the door. Phil stood up quickly. He stepped over to the fireplace,opened his coat and detached a flexible, box-shaped object from theinner lining. He laid this object on the mantle, and turned one of threesmall knobs about its front edge to the right. The box promptly extrudeda supporting leg from each of its four corners, pushed itself up fromthe mantle and became a miniature table. Phil glanced at the doorthrough which Beulah had vanished, listened a moment, then took theGeest gun from the wall, laid it carefully on top of the device andtwisted the second dial.
The odd-looking gun began to sink slowly down through the surface ofPhil's instrument, like a rock disappearing in mud. Within seconds itvanished completely; then, a moment later, it began to emerge from thebox's underside. Phil let the Geest gun drop into his hand, replaced iton the wall, turned the third knob. The box withdrew its supports andsank down to the mantle. Phil clipped it back inside his coat, closedthe coat, and strolled over to the center of the room to wait for AuntBeulah to return with the pies.
* * * * *
It was curious, Phil Boles reflected as his aircar moved out over thecraggy, plunging coastline to the north some while later, that a fewbold minds could be all that was needed to change the fate of a world. Afew minds with imagination enough to see how circumstances about themmight be altered.
On his left, far below, was now the flat ribbon of the peninsula, almostat sea level, its tip widening and lifting into the broad, rockypromontory on which stood Fort Roye--the only thing on the planet biggerand of more significance than the shabby backwoods settlements. And FortRoye was neither very big nor very significant. A Class F military basearound which, over the years, a straggling town had come into existence,Fort Roye was a space-age tra
ding post linking Roye's population to themighty mother planet, and a station from which the otherwise vacant andutterly unimportant 132nd Segment of the Space Territories wasperiodically and uneventfully patrolled. It was no more than that. Twicea month, an Earth ship settled down to the tiny port, bringing supplies,purchases, occasional groups of reassigned military and civilians--thelatter suspected of being drawn as a rule from Earth's Undesirableclassification. The ship would take off some days later, with a returnload of the few local products for which there was outside demand,primarily the medically valuable tupa roots; and Fort Roye lay